


Memory of Peace

by eerian_sadow



Series: Avalon [95]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Family, Friendship, Gen, Memory Loss, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-08
Updated: 2008-06-08
Packaged: 2018-10-14 22:34:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10545474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eerian_sadow/pseuds/eerian_sadow
Summary: When Jazz finds Soundwave offline in the woods, there's no way he can't help his friend. Then things take a turn for the complicated when the Decepticon wakes with amnesia.





	

“Stop, Ravage. You know I ain’t gonna hurt him.”

Soundwave’s quadrupedal sparkling gave the saboteur one last confrontational growl before backing away from Jazz. He knew the older mech well enough to know that he was telling the truth; Jazz was too close a friend for him to ever hurt Soundwave.

Didn’t mean he had to trust him completely, though.

Jazz knelt by his old friend’s side, humming tunelessly as he looked Soundwave over. Ravage wondered if he even knew he was making the noise.

“Wish you had the vocal capacity to tell me what happened here, Ravage,” the Autobot said as he scanned his friend for damage. “Soundwave’s hard to knock offline without some visible damage.”

 _Do you really think I can’t communicate?_ Ravage asked the saboteur. _That would be incredibly inconvenient._

Jazz looked up at the young Decepticon, surprised by the voice over his internal comm system. “Sorry if I insulted you. Guess I didn’t think about it too much.”

 _I forgive you. It’s not something you’ve really discussed with my creator, after all. And_ we _are not friends._ The quadruped bent down and nuzzled Soundwave affectionately. _He shielded us from an electromagnetic blast. Laserbeak took Buzzsaw and the twins after our attacker and left me to guard._

“So it’s just you and me to take care of him, huh? Don’t suppose you’d let me take him to Ratchet?” Jazz grinned as he asked the question. He knew the answer already.

_Negative. We are still Decepticons; your faction mates neither like or trust us._

The Autobot bent to carefully pick the offline Decepticon up from the ground. “Ratchet would help him no matter who you were. That’s what a good medic does.”

 _But we both know that your bondmate would put Soundwave in the brig. No, you may not take him to the_ Ark. Ravage hurried to catch the saboteur as he realized that Jazz had started running. _Where are you going?_

“Preceptor and Skyfire have an outdoor research lab set up not too far from here. It’ll have the equipment we need to get Soundwave back online.”

Ravage followed his creator’s best friend and hoped he wasn’t making a mistake.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“Jazz?”

The saboteur’s optics came back online instantly at the sound of his friend’s voice. “You had us scared for a while there, Soundwave.”

“Where are we?” Soundwave sat up carefully and looked around. “This is not our dorm.”

Jazz felt his spark sink at the question. Ravage whimpered from his guard post near the door.

“We’re at Perceptor’s research outpost on Earth.” When the communications specialist continued to stare at him, Jazz asked, “Soundwave, what’s the last thing you remember?”

“We were working on finals for composition. I think I fell into recharge while you were playing.”

The saboteur looked down, a wry smile on his face. “Oh man. I don’t know if I’m sad that you don’t remember the war now, or if I’m glad.”

 _Do not say things like that!_ Ravage sent into the conversation. _He does not even remember my siblings and me!_

“That’s why I don’t know if I’m happy or not. He doesn’t remember the war, but he doesn’t remember the war, you know?”

Ravage was silent for a moment before replying. _I know._

“Jazz? What war?”

In a trembling voice, and with Ravage filling in some details, Jazz told his best friend about the war that separated them. He explained their separate allegiances and talked about the cities laid waste by the conflict.

When he was finished, Soundwave had only one question. “Why?”

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Soundwave looked ecstatic when Jazz stepped inside the research post with a small barrel in one hand.

“You look happy,” the saboteur said, setting the barrel down on a table. “Did you remember something?”

“Negative. Happy to see you.” The blue mech stood from his resting place on the recharge berth and walked over to the black and white. “What is this?”

“Seriously high grade energon. The Twins make it and trade it for all kinds of things on the _Ark_. It was all I could get for you guys without raising too much suspicion.” Jazz opened the barrel. “It doesn’t go down smooth, but it will keep you fueled.”

“Jazz, I dislike high-grade.” Soundwave went from looking elated to looking a bit angry.

“I know that. But it’s this, or let Prime know I’m sheltering a pretty highly ranked enemy officer out here in the woods. I can’t do that to you, man.” The saboteur’s blue visor pinned red with a hard gaze. “You can either drink the high grade and let me watch your back while you process it or you can go offline from lack of fuel. It’s your call.”

Soundwave was silent.

 _Well, if he isn’t having any, I am._ Ravage jumped up on the table and peered into the barrel. _Seriously high grade is right! I can practically smell the overcharge coming off it. Do you have a smaller container to put some in for me?_

“I’m sure there’s something around here,” Jazz said, turning away from the Decepticons and rummaging around in the storage counters. He came back to the table a moment later with a large sample dish. “This’ll have to do. Its all we’ve got around here.”

 _It will be fine. Soundwave designed all of us to run for exceptionally long times with small fuel reserves._ The saboteur got the idea that the quadruped was grinning. _Once my fuel tanks are full, this will keep me powered for almost a meta-cycle._

“Now I know why you never seem to get tired. But what about Rumble and Frenzy?” The Autobot poured some of the energon into the sample dish as he spoke.

Ravage shrugged. _They’re adopted. Soundwave didn’t design them._

“Adopted, huh? That explains why they’re such different designs than the rest of you, then.” Jazz pretended not to notice Soundwave stepping away from the table and get his own sample dish from the cabinets. “I always wondered about that, but it never seemed right to ask.”

 _We found them in one of Megatron’s factories in Koan while we were on an inspection tour._ Ravage bent to drink from his dish as he narrated. _They couldn’t have been more than three cycles old, and they were already going into shut down from being away from a carrier. They were far too young to be able to survive on their own; their symbiosis programs were almost all that were running. Megatron wanted to scrap them, but Soundwave said he could fix them and make them useful._

The saboteur poured energon into Soundwave’s dish when the blue mech returned to the table. Soundwave retracted his face mask and took a sip. Jazz tried not to stare; it had been vorns since he had seen his friend without his mask. Instead, he asked Ravage another question.

“So, you guys really do have to stay with him to survive? I didn’t quite believe Blaster when he mentioned that; it seems like pretty bad designing.”

 _If Soundwave didn’t trust you so much, I wouldn’t answer this many questions. You do know that, right?_ Ravage looked up from his energon and stared at Jazz.

“Yeah, I know. Tell the wrong mech the wrong thing and all the Autobots know that the best way to take out Megatron’s spies is to take out Soundwave.”

The quadruped dipped his head in agreement. _Yes. It would take several Earth weeks for us to permanently offline, but deactivating Soundwave would deactivate us all. Unless we bonded with another carrier._

Jazz actually grinned at how unlikely Ravage’s tone made that seem. He couldn’t blame the younger mech; Blaster was the only other “cassette” carrier on the planet and he couldn’t see his best friend’s sparklings all changing sides to survive if one of the Autobots killed Soundwave.

“Do not speak as if I am not present,” Soundwave said, looking from the Decepticon to the Autobot. “Even if I don’t remember, I should be included.”

 _I’m sorry, Soundwave._ Ravage looked back into his energon.

“We didn’t mean it that way,” Jazz added. “We aren’t trying to pretend you aren’t here; I just keep askin’ questions ‘bout things that we assume you won’t remember.”

“Then let someone else ask the questions,” Soundwave told him.

“Sure. Ask away.”

There was a long silence as the other mechs thought. Finally, after taking a long drink of his energon, Ravage asked, _So how do you two know each other so well?_

Jazz and Soundwave exchanged a look. The blue mech’s expression was questioning; the black and white mech’s amused.

“I can’t believe that you didn’t tell your own sparklings how we got so close,” Jazz grinned. “But I won’t tell if you don’t want him to know.”

Soundwave shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I do not know my own reasons for not saying, and I see no reason to keep the information from him now.”

With a nod, the Autobot told the young Decepticon how they had met, back when they were still sparklings.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

After a full week, Soundwave wasn’t showing any signs of improvement. His sparklings had tracked him down at the research station, and Jazz discovered that his hands were very full trying to keep all of them in line.

But the saboteur had to admit they were adorable when they piled up together to recharge.

“It is…difficult to believe they are all mine,” Soundwave said, giving them the same amused look his friend was giving the younger Decepticons.

“Not when you know what you had to do to survive,” Jazz replied. “I was surprised that you didn’t accidentally make more of them.”

The blue mech looked startled. “Jazz, what do you mean?”

“Look, Soundwave, if you don’t remember then you’re better off not knowing.” Jazz looked down, wishing he hadn’t said anything. “I probably shouldn’t have even said anything about it.”

Soundwave looked down. The saboteur wasn’t certain what his friend was thinking, and he wasn’t certain he wanted to know.

“Jazz,” the Decepticon finally said, “I remember.”

“What?”

“I remember,” Soundwave repeated. “There are gaps, but the EMP damage seems to be repairing itself.”

The Autobot turned that information over in his processor. Soundwave hadn’t shown a single sign of his memory returning; he had even been surprised by the appearance of the other cassettes when they swept into the research station. He hadn’t acted like the war ravaged mech he had been forced to become; he had been the mech that Jazz remembered going to school with vorns ago.

“For how long?”

“Yesterday. When Laserbeak and Buzzsaw returned.” Soundwave turned unreadable optics to him. “Uplinking with them must have triggered the process.”

“Why didn’t ya say something?”

“I wanted peace.”

Jazz shook his head. “There’s never been any war between you and me, Soundwave. You know that.”

“I wanted there to be no war at all for a time.” The Decepticon turned his optics to his sparklings. “For them. They know nothing but war.”

The saboteur understood the reasoning, but he couldn’t help but feel a little used. “How long were you gonna let me believe you didn’t remember?”

“As long as you let me. I needed you those first few days, but then I wanted to keep you for as long as I could.” Soundwave couldn’t meet his optics. “I miss you. It was…selfish.”

“I wouldn’t have just walked away; I’d’ve stayed with you until we were both sure you were fully operational.” The Autobot reached out and put a comforting hand on his friend’s. The Decepticon was obviously ashamed of what he had done. “We would have had time.”

“Not enough time. Shockwave will be looking for me.”

“You mean he isn’t already?”

“I do not know.” Soundwave shook his head. “He is often unpredictable where I am concerned.”

Jazz didn’t have a reply for that. Intel had always said that the Decepticon second and the communications specialist were bonded, but Soundwave’s comment suggested otherwise.

After a long silence, Soundwave finally asked, “Are you angry?”

“No,” the saboteur replied. “I’m not angry. I might have done the same thing for Blue, if I had been in your place.”  



End file.
